The Calton Weavers Cemetery

We’ll never swerve

We’ll steadfast be

We’ll have our rights

We will be free

Calton Burial Ground in Glasgow is the memorial cemetery to the six Calton weavers who were killed on September the 3rd, during the 1787 strike by troops of the 39th (Dorsetshire) Regiment of Foot, called ut by the magistrates. The burial ground is located on Abercomby Street.

The Calton Martyrs of 1787

A small green grave lies down by Calton

In the heart o' Glasgow town.

Men of honour, men of courage,

Their names are honoured with renown.

Two hundred years ago they suffered

For the workers glorious Cause,

They were shot defending Freedom

Against the boss and Tory laws.

On Glasgow Green the weavers gathered,

For Tyrants might cared not a fig,

They marched from Calton up towards the Highgate,

And faced the army at Drygate Brig.

At the provost's order the coward soldiers

Opened fire and six men were slain,

And the people's anger it spread like wild-fire

From Glasgow Cross out to Dunblane.

These were the lads who wove all clothing,

Shot for upholding a scanty wage,

While the boss and soldier are damned forever,

Brave names will glow on history's page.

In a small green grave down by Calton,

Spare a thought and a prayer as you pass on,

These were the pioneers of Freedom,

And heralds of a brighter Dawn.

Freddie Anderson

'They are unworthy of freedom who expect it from other hands than their own'

St. Kilda memory

 From the October 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are familiar with the work of anthropologists who have studied the life-styles of pre-capitalist societies and shown that human beings have not always been competitive, money conscious owners and non-owners; but their examples have usually been regarded as rather exotic—Amazonian Indians, Polynesians and the like. It was all the more interesting, therefore, to see in the Guardian(July 25) an article written in commemoration of the evacuation a mere 50 years ago of the last inhabitants of the island of St Kilda in the Hebrides.

It is fascinating to read remarks about these people (some of whom are still alive in England) that recall very similar observations about savage tribes. We read, for example, that for hundreds of years the islanders existed without the use of money, something that seems to baffle those workers who imagine that apes made money their first priority as soon as they got down from the trees. “There was virtually no crime and no policeman ever landed on their shores.” The island was owned by the McLeods of Skye. “All work to pay the rent (in kind) was done communally as was the sharing out of the sea-bird harvest which was divided according to need.” “Every member of the community relied on the others for survival and notions of individual payment were strange to them. Sheep, a secondary source of wealth, were owned individually but if one man lost some, the others would make up his losses.”

The island was bleak and windswept (still is) but there is no evidence from 17th and 18th century accounts that “the islanders were wretched or dissatisfied. On the contrary, authors wrote of “the relish and gaiety with which they went about their work and of their great love for poetry, music, dancing and other jollity”. But the outside world of capitalism could not leave St. Kilda alone. “The ministers and missionaries proved a decisive influence, mostly for the bad . . .  their poetry and music, banned by the ministers, died out . . . A community, which had been a weather-beaten anachronism for a millenium and flourished with it — declined and died.”

Is it democracy?

In the run up to their annual conference, the Socialist Workers Party publishes Pre-conference bulletins. One such bulletin from 2012 bulletin contains the SWP constitution.  Some snippets:

“Branches and/or districts elect delegates to Conference on a basis proportional to their membership, as determined by the Central Committee.[...]

(5) Central Committee The CC consists of members elected by the Conference according to the following procedure: The outgoing Central Committee selects and circulates a provisional slate for the new CC at the beginning of the period for pre-Conference discussion. This is then discussed at the district aggregates where comrades can propose alternative slates.

At the Conference the outgoing CC proposes a final slate (which may have changed as a result of the pre-Conference discussion). This slate, along with any other that is supported by a minimum of five delegates, is discussed and voted on by Conference.

Between Conferences the CC is entrusted with the political leadership of the organisation and is responsible for the national direction of all political and organisational work, subject to the decision- making powers of Conference.”

Note: there is no specification of the size of the CC, so they can always co-opt oppositionists to the official slate.  Also note the CC controls the size of conference which can make it more manageable.

This is justified thus:

“The necessity of a revolutionary party flows from the fact that although the working class must collectively emancipate itself, the ideological domination of the ruling class means there is considerable uneveness within the working class in terms of its confidence, organisation and ideas. The role of a revolutionary party is to draw together the militant minority who understand the need for revolution, not to substitute for the class, but to constantly seek ways to act to increase workers’ combativity and confidence and in the process win wider layers of workers to socialist ideas.[...] And the existence of a leadership is a necessity. Uneveness in terms of experience, confidence and clarity of ideas exists not just inside the working class as a whole, but also within the revolutionary party. The more roots the party has inside the working class, the more it is able to intervene in the class struggle, the greater this uneveness will be.” (CC statement). 

Note, it assumes that the leadership is the pinnacle of this uneven consciousness, and instead of seeking to challenge the "unevenness" seeks to work within it, and in effect justifies a technocratic/theocratic elite dictating to the ignorant, rather than a two way dialogue between revolutionaries and workers.  After all, for all we (naturally) assume that we are right, we enter into debate and have to withstand the possibility that we may be proved wrong.

Little has changed since the Socialist Party published an educational document on the SWP in 1995. Here's an extract on Conference Procedure from section III:

The main item on the agenda is a report by the Central Committee on the political “perspectives” which is usually a document of pamphlet-length. The Central Committee also submits other reports – on work in special areas of activity (industry, students, women,) internal organisation, finance – for the Conference to discuss. In the SWP, branches still have the formal right to submit motions, but they are strongly discouraged from doing so. As an explanatory note intended for new members, accompanying documents submitted for the party’s 1983 Conference put it:

“Branches can submit resolutions if they wish and these may [sic] be voted on. But in recent years the practice of sending resolutions to conference has virtually ceased” (Socialist Review, September 1983).

What this means is that it is the Central Committee – the leadership – which quite literally sets the agenda for the Conference. The branch delegates meet, therefore, to discuss only what is put before them by the Central Committee. Not that the delegates are delegates in the proper sense of the term as instructed representatives of the branches sending them:

“Delegates should not be mandated . . . Mandating is a trade union practice, with no place in a revolutionary party”.

Since voting on motions submitted by branches is dismissed as a “trade union practice”, another procedure, more open to manipulation by the leadership, is operated:

“At the end of each session of conference commissions are elected to draw up a report on the session detailing the points made. In the event of disagreement two or more commissions can be elected by the opposing delegates. The reports are submitted to conference and delegates then vote in favour of one of the commissions. The advantage of this procedure is that conference does not have to proceed by resolution like a trade union conference”.

No branch motions, no mandated delegates, what else? No ballots of the entire membership either. In the first volume of his political biography of Lenin, Cliff records in shocked terms that “in January 1907 Lenin went so far as to argue for the institution of a referendum of all party members on the issues facing the party”, commenting “certainly a suggestion which ran counter to the whole idea of democratic centralism” (Lenin, Building the Party, p. 280)

In fact, no official of the SWP above branch level is directly elected by a vote of the members. One power that the branches do retain is the right to nominate members for election, by the Conference delegates, to the National Committee, but, as over presenting motions, they are discouraged from nominating people who do not accept the “perspectives” espoused by the Central Committee. So elections do take place to the National Committee but on the basis of personalities rather than politics. However, it is the way that the Central Committee is elected that is really novel: the nominations for election to new central committee are proposed not by branches but . . . by the outgoing central committee! Once again, in theory, branches can present other names but they never do.

It is easy to see how this means that the central committee – the supreme leadership of the organisation – is a self-perpetuating body renewal in effect only by co-optation. This is justified on the grounds of continuity and efficiency – it takes time to gain the experience necessary to become a good leader so that it would be a waste of the experienced gained if some leader were to be voted off by the vagaries of a democratic vote. Choosing the leadership by a competitive vote is evidently something else “with no place in a revolutionary party” any more than in an army.”

This, incidentally, is how the Politburo was (s)elected in the USSR which the SWP admits was state-capitalism. In particular, the slate system of electing (in effect co-opting) the "leadership". This was the practice of Communist Parties everywhere, including those in power. As far as I know, it is still practised in China, Cuba, and North Korea. The thing is of course that for the SWP this would still continue after "the revolution", a recipe for the sort of state capitalism they rightly criticise in the old USSR. But then they always did support state capitalism in Russia under Lenin and up until Trotsky was exiled in 1928.

Note the way the SWP avoids votes.  The CC slate is circulated, and ambitious members who come forward will just be added, there are no votes at conference just summaries of debate.  There is no way to quantify dissent (an important tool for anyone seeking to build a new majority). Of course, SWPers condemn nose counting, asking why the vote of one person should determine the outcome; and I've seen in practice a reluctance to just settle arguments with a vote, with the 'leading' member able to drag out debate in order to try and get their way. This could be sold, we suppose, as an attempt to build consensus (indeed, wasn't that how Occupy worked as well), but we soon see that without the right to be outvoted, a determined minority can come to dominate the discussion.

Other Leninist organisations are criticising the SWP for not applying "democratic centralism" properly. Our criticism is more fundamental: we are criticising "democratic centralism" as such.

The Alliance for Workers Liberty’s constitution clearly spells out what "democratic centralism" means in practice -- a hierarchical organisation dominated by its leaders:

“To be effective, our organisation must be democratic; geared to the maximum clarity of politics; and able to respond promptly to events and opportunities with all its strength, through disciplined implementation of the decisions of the elected and accountable committees which provide political leadership”.(emphasis added)

Below the "leadership", there are two levels of membership: "candidates" and "activists":

“Members will normally be admitted as candidates, to go through six months of education, training and disciplined activity before being admitted as full activists. A branch or fraction may, at the end of six months, extend the candidate period if it judges that the above requirements have not been fulfilled adequately. In such a case the candidate has the right to appeal to the Executive Committee. Candidates do not have the right to vote in the AWL”

On promotion to "activist", members are required to, among other things:

“2. Engage in regular political activity under the discipline of the organisation;

4. Sell the literature of the AWL regularly;”

They have to ask "leave of absence" if they can't do this for some reason:

“A member suffering from illness or other distress may be granted a total or partial leave of absence from activity for up to two months; but the leave of absence must be ratified in writing by the Executive Committee, and the activist must continue to pay financial contributions to the AWL.”

If they stop selling the AWL's paper without this permission, then they are in trouble:

“Where activists have become inactive or failed to meet their commitments to the AWL without adequate cause such as illness, and there is no dispute about this fact, branches, fractions, or appropriate committees may lapse them from membership with no more formality than a week's written notice. Activists who allege invalid lapsing may appeal to the National Committee.”

They can even be fined:

“Branches, fractions, and appropriate elected committees may impose fines or reprimands for lesser breaches of discipline. Any activist has the right to defend himself or herself before a decision on disciplinary action is taken on him or her, except in the case of fines for absence or suspensions where the AWL's security or integrity are at risk.”

As to branches and "fractions" (AWL members boring from within other organisations), they can elect their own organisers but these are responsible to the leadership not to those who elected them:

“Each branch or fraction shall elect an organiser and other officers. The organiser is responsible to the AWL and is subject to the political and administrative supervision of its leading committees for the functioning of the branch or fraction and for ensuring that AWL policy is carried out.”

They can even give orders to those who elected them:

“Branch or fraction organisers can give binding instructions to activists in their areas on all day today matters.”

But if they step out of line the leadership can remove them and replace them with someone of their choice:

“The Executive Committee and the National Committee have the right in extreme cases, and after written notice and a fair hearing, to remove branch or fraction organisers from their posts and impose replacements.”

What self-respecting person would want to be a member of such an organisation? 

Free Access Socialism

The Socialist Party often describes socialism as a world of free access, but what does this mean? It does not mean a system based upon a free-for-all, free-to-grab-all society without rules. But there will be no private property other than personal possessions, no buying and sell hence no prices and no money. No artificial barriers to people having what they’ve decided they want. It doesn’t matter whether they’ll be called shops, stores or warehouses, but there will be places where people will go to collect necessities and luxuries. There will be choice, and probably more real choice than exists today when you can ‘pick’ from near-identical products. Everything provided will be better quality, as production for use means there would be no point in producing shoddy or disposable goods, practices which will be completely alien in socialism. A sensible use of resources would involve making things to last and as repairable and recyclable as possible. The reason why things are made to wear out is not because of the attitudes of the people involved. The management may think it’s criminal but they are paid to optimise profits. If they produced razor blades to last for decades, the firm would go broke. It is not the attitudes which are crucial, but economic interests. The rule will be “fit for purpose”

We are not advocating the abolition of money alone which would solve no problems and undoubtedly create many difficulties. But what we do propose is, that the whole system of money and exchange, buying and selling, profit-making and wage-earning be entirely abolished and that instead the community as a whole should organise and administer the productions of goods for use only, and that there will be the free distribution of these goods to all members of the community according to each person’s needs. Wealth will not be measured in terms of money since no person could say that he or she owned a share of such-and-such value in the people’s means of production. In fact, all the world’s means of production such as land, factories, mines, machines, etc, would belong to the whole of the people of the world who would co-operate in using them. Those things which mankind needs as the means of life will belong to the whole people .The world must be regarded as one country and humanity as one people where all the people will co-operate to produce and distribute all the goods and services which are needed by mankind, each person willingly and freely, taking part in the way he or she feels they can do best. All goods and services will be produced for use only, and having been produced, will be distributed, free to the people so that each person’s needs are fully satisfied.

A very common objection to socialist free access is based on a view of human nature which asserts that people would selfishly take and take without giving. The Socialist Party considers such a pessimistic perspective as one which suggests that if given the right economic framework, then, in fact, humans cannot consciously co-operate, work and consume together. Such an outlook lacks confidence that either there are sufficient resources on the planet to provide for all, or that human beings can work voluntarily, and co-operate to organise production and distribution of wealth without chaos, and consume wealth responsibly without some form of rationing. It remains fixated to the lazy person, greedy individual critique of human nature. The Socialist Party, however, will continue to struggle to create a structured society where people have accepted socially mutual obligations and recognise the realisation of universal interdependency. We understand that decisions arising from this would profoundly affect people’s choices and attitudes, and greatly influence their behaviour, economically or otherwise. Human behaviour reflects society. Humans behave differently depending upon the conditions that they live in.

Critics of free access project on to socialism the insatiable consumerism of capitalism, paying no heed to the changes in social outlook that would occur when people's needs are met and people feel secure, when the world is no longer based upon dog-eat-dog that in distrust, where the ostentatious accumulation of material goods cannot validate an individual's personal worth or their status since access is unrestricted. Goods and services made freely available for individuals to take without requiring these individuals to offer something in direct exchange creates a sense of mutual obligations and the realisation of universal interdependency arising from this would change people’s perceptions and influence their behaviour in such a society. And let us not forget that the establishment of socialism through the struggles of a mass socialist movement it is reasonable to suppose that the desire for socialism on such a large scale, and the pre-requisite conscious understanding of what it entails and involves, will influence the way people behaved in socialism and towards each other. So why would most people want to undermine the new society they had just helped to create?

And what of our socialist revolution? The Socialist Party does not believe in achieving socialism through coercion or through violent seizure of power by a revolutionary vanguard. That's no basis upon which to build a fair and democratic society. No, the only way that socialism, as we understand it, could be set up and run is through the consent and cooperation of an overwhelming majority of the world's population. And the only way we will know once there is such a majority is when it says so via the ballot. It is then, and only then, that we will know that the time is ripe for socialist revolution. It is then that we can start dismantling the coercive machinery of government and start taking control of the things we need to make society function in our own interests. That the socialist revolution can only be international, creating a world-wide society where production is carried out solely to meet the needs and desires of its inhabitants.

Having got rid of the worst relics of the old order, production would then be adjusted so that enough is turned out to satisfy fully the needs of everyone making due provision by storing of buffer stocks for the contingencies of natural calamities such as local droughts or earthquakes. A new social system such as we envisage socialism to be, requires that the great mass of people having already learnt what responsibilities and obligations have to be met and understand the means of the necessary action to bring it about. But it also incumbent upon us all to carry on with our usual duties for the time being , except all those whose tasks being of an unnecessary nature to the new system are rendered idle: for example, cashiers, ticket collectors and so on. These people would, in due course, be slotted into more socially productive occupations for which they considered themselves suitable.

Having produced all that is required, all that is necessary is to distribute it to the people so that each person’s needs are fully satisfied. In the case of perishable goods it would merely be a matter of transport from factory or farm direct to the local distributing centres, and in the case of other goods to large regional or city stores or warehouses. From there it is but a step to the local distributing stores which would stock the whole range of necessary goods - a kind of show-room or warehouse - and from which goods could be delivered to the homes of people or collected by them if so preferred. After all, the daily, weekly, and monthly needs of any given number of people in a district are easily worked out, so it should not be very difficult to find out what stocks the local stores would require. Goods will be “distributed” not “exchanged” , neither “exported” nor “imported”; just as if the whole world’s goods were pooled and then each region drew what is required.

Simply put, in a free access society, there would be no barter economy or monetary system. It would be an economy based on need. Therefore, a consumer would have a need, and there would be a communication system set in place that relays that need to the producer. The producer create the product, and then send the product back to the consumer, and the need would be satisfied. We use the supply chain tools and logistic systems that capitalism bequeaths us, which will be suitably modified and adapted and transformed for the new conditions. Decisions will be made at different levels of organisation: global, regional and local but with the bulk of decision-making being made at the local level. A free access economy would be a polycentric not a centrally planned economy. Production would not be ever-increasing but would be stabilised at the level required to satisfy needs. All that would be produced would be products for consumption and the products needed to replace and repair the raw materials and instruments of production used up in producing these consumer goods. This has been called by some economists a “steady-state economy.”

Replacing the exchange economy by common ownership and free access basically means that wealth would cease to take the form of exchange value, so that all the expressions of this social relationship peculiar to an exchange economy, such as money and prices, would automatically disappear. In other words, goods would cease to have an economic value and would become simply physical objects which human beings could use to satisfy some want or other. The disappearance of economic value would mean the end of economic calculation in the sense of calculation in units of value whether measured by money or directly in some unit of labour-time. Free access socialism is a moneyless society in which use values would be produced from other use values, there would be no need to have a universal unit of account but could calculate exclusively in kind. On the one side would be recorded the resources (materials, energy, equipment, labour) used up in production and on the other side the amount of the good produced, together with any by-products. This, of course, is done under capitalism but it is doubled by an exchange value calculation: the exchange value of the resources used up is recorded as the cost of production while the exchange value of the output (after it has been realised on the market) is recorded as sales receipts. If the latter is greater than the former, then a profit has been made; if it is less, then a loss is recorded. Such profit-and-loss accounting has no place in socialism and would, once again, be quite meaningless.

Calculation-in-kind entails the counting or measurement of physical quantities of different kinds of factors of production. There is no general unit of accounting involved in this process such as money or labour hours or energy units. In fact, every conceivable kind of economic system has to rely on calculation in kind, including capitalism. Without it, the physical organisation of production (e.g. maintaining inventories) would be literally impossible. But where capitalism relies on monetary accounting as well as calculation-in-kind, socialism relies solely on the latter. This is one reason why socialism holds a decisive productive advantage over capitalism by eliminating the need to tie up vast quantities of resources and labour implicated in a system of monetary/pricing accounting.

The message of the Socialist Party is for all members of the class which owns little more than its ability to work and is therefore forced to sell its labour power to an employer in order to live. Revolution is a mysterious term. Most of us understand it in relation to the capitalist revolutions of the past: barricades, bayonets and blood, rousing slogans and heroic leaders leading to a new regime, one that is not really much different from the old one. However, that is not what socialists mean by revolution. When we talk of revolution we mean a conscious change in social relationships from those based upon private or state ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution to common ownership and democratic control of the world around us. The socialist revolution will mean the instant abolition of class divisions, the wages system, private property, and the need for money. It is a big aim, but it presents the only alternative to the present world system of capitalism.

The Socialist Party states as a matter of principle that the establishment of the new social order can only be possible when a majority of the world’s workers consciously understand and want it. Once majority consciousness arises, nothing can stop the conquest of power by the working class. The tensions and contradictions of working class life under capitalism tend to lead more and more workers to question the status quo. This critical thought is essential, for once you start to formulate questions, you are half way to knowing the answers. But capitalism has an immense capacity for accommodating working class discontent and dissent and it is often able to convert challenging resistance into sterile rebelliousness. Socialist consciousness cannot be accommodated within capitalism: not until we have a system of society run in the human interest will socialists be content. Socialism will open up the new possibility: the right to be different, to assert individuality, to be eccentric and to be visionaries.

The Socialist Party will continue to do everything in our power to persuade the world’s working class that their interest is not served, and can never be served by support for a system that treats them as inferior, dispensable beings and puts a permanent barrier between themselves and the fruits of their labour. It can only be brought about when members of that vast majority of the population in the economically advanced countries of the world, the working class, decide they want to bring it about and then take conscious political action to do so. And by “conscious political action” we mean going to the ballot box and voting for candidates with a revolutionary mandate to dissolve capitalism and establish socialism. This democratically established society will itself be fully democratic and in it the means of life will be produced in abundance and used freely by everyone.

Glasgow homeless

This letter appeared in the current issue of Weekly Worker and Socialist Courier see no reason to give it a wider audience. 

The number of homelessness care providers in Glasgow is being reduced from five down to one or two between now and November. There is a competitive tendering process going on at the moment. This is open to all providers at a UK level. It is part of the process of the Labour-controlled Glasgow council passing on cuts to services, following big cuts to its budget from the Scottish National Party government and, ultimately, budget cuts from the Tories to the Scottish government.

Pressure is being applied to the workforces ‘to do more with less’- ie, do more work, do it better than now and with far fewer workers. Subtle pressure is being applied - if your company is to win the tender, you may have to think about doing things you don’t do now: shift work, compulsory weekend and evening work, personal care, more community link projects, etc. If you object, then the tender will go to the providers that are willing to dramatically increase their workloads and be totally flexible and you will probably be out of a job.

Back in planet real world, this will mean workers who provide vital services to the homeless finding themselves being made redundant (and potentially homeless themselves) and facing an ever stricter work programme. It will also mean increased worker turnover and absenteeism. It will certainly lead to poorer-quality services to the public. All the current areas of support will reduce in quality - support with finding permanent accommodation, mental health problems and addiction issues not being addressed, more social isolation and exclusion. There will be greater poverty and debt-related issues. All these problems and many more will not be addressed to the same level of quality in Glasgow as they have been up until now. The care side of homelessness in Glasgow has worked so far. The cuts could see a wasteland created, as we go down more and more of an American-type road - more visible homeless, more begging, more people on the streets with mental and addiction issues, as more people fall through the current safety net.

It will lead to increased crime, family stress and break-up and shorter life expectancy. And even on cost grounds alone it will be the council that has to pick up the tab for all of this.

These services have already experienced redundancies on a wide scale in the years since the Tories were elected in 2010, resulting in increased workloads for existing workers. Casework teams who are responsible for moving homeless on to permanent accommodation when they are ‘tenancy-ready’ are in crises now and have been for over a year. Redundancies and new procedures that lengthened the waiting time for homeless people to be moved on have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. Many homeless now have to wait to get a caseworker allocated and, even once this takes place, the new procedures combined with less social housing stock can mean a long wait for permanent housing.

Those classed as homeless living in temporary accommodation have very high rents - on average about £180 per week. In the past homeless people who worked paid £60 per week from their wages towards the rent and the rest would be paid in housing benefit - fairly straightforward and unbureaucratic. Now a ‘revenue and property’ team calculates to the exact pound what they want in rent and council tax based on proof of all income supplied. Every time income adjusts - eg, a person gets some extra hours or an additional benefit - there has to be a readjustment of the claim. There is a delay between housing benefit processing claims and changes to claims and the revenue and property receiving money, leading to demand letters to the homeless for exorbitant rents and council tax.

If the homeless try not to work while they are in temporary accommodation to get 100% housing benefit and council tax benefit, they are hit with the ‘work programme’, so the council knows it can hound the working homeless for more and more rent and council tax. There is a scam in the midst of this that is causing real hardship. Temporary furnished flats (TFFs) that charge £180 per week rent on average are around £225 to £250 per month in rent if they are permanent and unfurnished for the same type of tenancies. This looks awfully like the council trying to line its coffers with state housing benefit money. It has been going on for years, but the removal of the cap means some of the working homeless are now being made destitute.

The attack on the sick is also causing huge stress. If a homeless person on employment and support allowance is assessed as ‘fit for work’, they are not only kicked off employment and support allowance (ESA), but also lose housing benefit. However, it is rare for the homeless person to be informed of this. Housing benefit are immediately informed, so the homeless individual is often unknowingly accumulating rent arrears, as housing benefit has been stopped at soon as their ESA was stopped. They can accumulate large arrears very quickly through no fault of their own. And rent arrears in one of the key reasons housing associations will not move people on from temporary accommodation to permanent accommodation.

And there are queuing systems now for everything. It used to be just the department for work and pensions where it was difficult to get a human voice on the line; now it’s everything - asylum and refugee teams, casework ... There is now a queuing system for housing and council tax benefit problems. A year ago a support worker could get straight through to them on the phone. Now the homeless person has to go into the city centre to deal with any housing/council tax issues, incurring transport costs, as there can be up to a 30-minute wait on the phone.

Glasgow council has moved from a ‘two reasonable offers’ policy of housing to ‘one reasonable offer’ - it’s take it or leave it. If the one offer is refused they ‘discharge duty’ - meaning the homeless are on their own, having to look for a private let. The person has to leave the temporary accommodation or face huge rent arrears and eviction. Many housing associations are now demanding one month rent in advance from people who sometimes only receive £73 per week jobseeker’s allowance.

Even people who are successful at moving on to permanent accommodation will not get a decision about receiving goods to furnish the permanent tenancy for three weeks after they have signed the missives for the permanent tenancy - meaning three weeks of rent arrears on the temporary flat if they have not moved out of it into a completely unfurnished permanent tenancy (and for people with family and young children this is a horrendous state of affairs, raising serious health and safety issues).

The cuts to caseworker numbers, cuts to council workers working on housing and council tax benefit claims, benefit cuts, cuts to support agencies such as translation, are all creating a perfect storm. There are fewer and fewer resources with more and more demand, leading to increased stress, frustration, anger and in some cases sadly intolerance. Immigrants are not responsible for austerity. The rich are.

The Defend Glasgow Services campaign ought to oppose the latest ‘race to the bottom’ cuts by the council with deputations, lobbies, demos, council surgery pickets and putting up anti-cuts candidates for next May’s council elections. The council ought to put forward a needs-led budget. We need an end to austerity!

Glasgow homeless support worker

Understanding socialism

Ever had that feeling that the world doesn´t work the way they say it should? It’s an insane world, a rat race. Everybody running around as fast as they can – produce, consume, produce, consume. It is a dog-eat-dog world. The gap between the rich and the poor is widening and deepening in different parts of the world, mainly due to social injustice. Some of us think we need a major change to another kind of society that prioritises collaboration instead of competition. We are here not to repair the system. We are here, instead to replace it. It is not our job to mend a broken system but to end it. The problem is not Clinton or Trump. Nor is it May or Corbyn. The problem is capitalism. There is only one revolution and it is to fight for all of the oppressed and exploited. Our country is the Earth. We are citizens of the world.

The issue of ‘socialism’ is surrounded by confusion. One of the reasons for that is that different people use the same word to mean different things. There are people for whom ‘socialism’ means the ‘communist’ dictatorships that used to exist in Russia and other countries. Under these regimes, everything was owned by the state and controlled by government officials. For other people like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn ‘socialism’ means a series of reforms to make society fairer and more democratic—more like what exists in Scandinavia. Capitalists are expected to pay more taxes to finance a better welfare system and there will be stronger and more effective government regulation of their business activity. But there is no need to replace capitalism by a fundamentally different system. Some thinkers would now prefer to abandon the word 'socialism' and instead substitute another word for it that would save the ideal and concept once attached to the term. Even in the past, some writers employs what they considered synonyms – cooperative commonwealth or industrial democracy. An alternative word, however, would just have its meaning corrupted in the same manner as the old one. Changing the name would not solve any problem. The real need today is gaining an understanding of socialism rather than changing the word 'socialism.'

There are those who feel that socialism is a long way off and, in the meantime, propose immediate demands to solve the hardships and difficulties that we must face. They consider their policies as realistic and pragmatic thus advocate either palliatives such as either government legislation or even ownership as gradual steps to socialism. Some consider state capitalism (often called state socialism) as a form of socialism, if not socialism itself. Necessarily, these are efforts to administer capitalism. All this leads to mistaken ideas about the nature of socialism identifying it with capitalist relationships. The socialist objective no longer becomes the aim or goal to be pursued. The means becomes the end. And the attitude towards those who understand that the purpose of political activities must be associated with the socialist objective is to accuse them of being purists, sectarians or dogmatists. But the result of being freed from ‘theory’ and given free rein to practical politics has meant workers are bewildered by the deceptions and disappointments of the 'socialist' election 'victories' in all corners of the globe, disillusioned because of their false hopes in so-called socialist reforms.

However, there exists another tradition of socialist thought in which socialism means neither the reform of capitalism nor state ownership. It means social (or communal) ownership—that is, democratic control of the means of life by and for the whole of society (or the whole community). It also means production for use, not profit. Socialism is a worldwide society. The interconnected nature of today’s world makes it impossible to create a new society in a single country. Capitalism is a world system, so socialism too must be a world system. The aspiration of a socialist is to achieve a society from which exploitation will be banished and in which the unfolding of each individual would be the condition of the freedom of all. This is the basic idea of socialism which can serve as a rallying cry to muster support.

Socialism is a classless society is one in which the use of the means of production is controlled by all members of society on an equal basis, and not just by a section of them to the exclusion of the rest. For a society to be free of classes would mean that within society there would be no group (with the exception, perhaps, of temporary delegate bodies, freely elected by the community and subject always to recall) which would exercise, as a group, any special control over access to the instruments of production; and no group receiving, as a group, preferential treatment in distribution. Every member is in a position to take part, on equal terms with every other member, in deciding how the means of production should be used. Every member of society is socially equal, standing in exactly the same relationship to the means of production as every other member. Similarly, every member of society has access to the fruits of production on an equal footing. Once the use of the means of production is under the democratic control of all members of society, class ownership has been abolished. The means of production can still be said to belong to those who control and benefit from their use, in this case to the whole population organised on a democratic basis, and so to be 'commonly owned' by them.

 Common ownership is defined as a situation in which no person is excluded from the possibility of controlling, using and managing the means of production, distribution and consumption. Each member of society can acquire the capacity, that is to say, has the opportunity to realise a variety of goals, for example, to consume what they want, to use means of production for the purposes of socially necessary or unnecessary work, to administer production and distribution, to plan to allocate resources, and to make decisions about short term and long term collective goals. Common ownership, then, refers to every individual’s potential ability to benefit from the wealth of society and to participate in its running.

The use the word 'ownership' may be misleading in that this does not fully bring out the fact that the transfer to all members of society of the power to control the production of wealth makes the very concept of private property redundant. With common ownership, no one is excluded from the possibility of controlling or benefiting from the use of the means of production, so that with reference to them the concept of property in the sense of exclusive possession is meaningless: no one is excluded, there are no non-owners. We could talk of “no-ownership” and how the classless alternative society to capitalism is a 'no-ownership' society, but the same idea can be expressed without having to do this if common ownership is understood as being a social relationship and not a form of property ownership. This social relationship—equality between human beings with regard to the control of the use of the means of production—can equally accurately be described by the terms 'classless society' and 'democratic control' as by 'common ownership' since these three terms are only different ways of describing it from different angles. The use of the term 'common ownership' to refer to the basic social relationship of the alternative society to capitalism is not to be taken to imply therefore that common ownership of the means of production could exist without democratic control. Common ownership means democratic control means a classless society. When we refer to the society based on common ownership, generally we use the term “socialism”, though we have no objection to others using 'communism' since for us these terms mean exactly the same and are interchangeable.

Common ownership is not to be confused with state ownership (or nationalisation), since an organ of coercion, or state, has no place in socialism. A class society is a society with a state because sectional control over the means of production and the exclusion of the rest of the population cannot be asserted without coercion, and so without a special organ to exercise this coercion. On the other hand, a classless society is free of a state because such an organ of coercion becomes unnecessary as soon as all members of society stand in the same relationship with regard to the control of the use of the means of production. The existence of a state as an instrument of class political control and coercion is quite incompatible with the existence of the social relationship of common ownership. State ownership is a form of exclusive property ownership which implies a social relationship which is totally different from socialism. Common ownership is a social relationship of equality and democracy which makes the concept of property redundant because there are no longer any excluded non-owners. State ownership, on the other hand, presupposes the existence of a government machine, a legal system, armed forces and the other features of an institutionalised organ of coercion. State-owned means of production belong to an institution which confronts the members of society, coerces them and dominates them, both as individuals and as a collectivity. Under state ownership the answer to the question 'Who owns the means of production?' is not 'everybody' or 'nobody' as with common ownership; it is 'the state'. In other words, when a state owns the means of production, the members of society remain non-owners, excluded from control. Both legally and socially, the means of production belong not to them, but to the state, which stands as an independent power between them and the means of production.

The state is not an abstraction floating above society and its members; it is a social institution, and, as such, a group of human beings, a section of society, organised in a particular way. This is why, strictly speaking, we should have written above that the state confronts most members of society and excludes most of them from control of the means of production. For wherever there is a state, there is always a group of human beings who stand in a different relationship to it from most members of society: not as the dominated, nor as the excluded, but as the dominators and the excluders. Under state ownership, this group controls the use of the means of production to the exclusion of the other members of society. In this sense, it owns the means of production, whether or not this is formally and legally recognised.

Deprived districts in Scotland

Ferguslie Park in Paisley has been identified as the area of Scotland with the greatest level of deprivation. It is the second successive time the area has been at the bottom of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD), which is published every four years. Lower Whitecraigs in East Renfrewshire is classed as the least deprived. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-37230405

Statisticians rate almost 7,000 areas in Scotland by standards including income, employability and health. The statisticians say "deprived" does not just mean "poor" or "low income". It can also mean people have fewer resources and opportunities, for example in health and education.

Glasgow has 56 of the 100 most deprived areas. Edinburgh has six.

The 10 most deprived areas in Scotland:

1. Ferguslie Park, Paisley

2. Carntyne West and Haghill, Glasgow City

3. North Barlanark and Easterhouse South (Area 1), Glasgow City

4. Old Shettleston and Parkhead North, Glasgow City

5. Nitshill, Glasgow City

6. Muirhouse, City of Edinburgh

7. Possil Park, Glasgow City

8. Cliftonville, North Lanarkshire

9. Drumchapel North, Glasgow City

10. North Barlanark and Easterhouse South (Area 2), Glasgow City

The 10 least deprived areas in Scotland:

1. Lower Whitecraigs and South Giffnock, East Renfrewshire

2. Midstocket, Aberdeen City

3. Marchmont West (Area 1), City of Edinburgh

4. St Andrews South West, Fife

5. Comely Bank, City of Edinburgh

6. Joppa, City of Edinburgh

7. Marchmont West (Area 2),City of Edinburgh

8. Hilton, Aberdeen City

9. Kilmardinny East, East Dunbartonshire

10. Bruntsfield, City of Edinburgh

Poverty begets poverty

Poorer people in Scotland are paying more than others for essential services, according to research from the Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS). Those on low incomes often paid above average for energy, telecoms and financial services. Bigger bills makes their financial situation worse which further affects health and relationships, CAS said.

Researchers found that lower income Scots were more likely to use expensive pre-payment meters. Less than a quarter of those who used the meters had switched their energy supplier in the last three years. Those living in the most deprived areas of the country were even less likely to switch suppliers, according to the report.

They were also more likely to use mobile phones on pricier pay-as-you-go plans, researchers said. In addition, poorer people in Scotland were less likely to switch phone suppliers and more likely to be without a mobile at all - and so were hardest hit by the rise in landline costs.

CAS said low income consumers would often take out credit or loans without understanding the full costs involved.

The poor had no home contents insurance because they found it unaffordable.

CAS spokesman Patrick Hogan said: "Our new research today shows that many individuals' financial situations are made even worse because poverty levels limit their choices when it comes to accessing consumer services. So, if you are poor in Scotland today you pay more for basic services, and so become even poorer.” Mr Hogan added: " Poverty should not breed even more poverty."

Capitalism cannot be reformed

We are offended by applying the description of 'socialism' to any of the Trotskyite parties, or even to the Labour Party. The Labour party has never been a socialist party.

“The Labour party has never been a socialist party, although there have always been socialists in it – a bit like Christians in the Church of England.” (Tony Benn)

It is grossly unjust also to smear people who have joined the Labour Party in this way, some of them might be, a small minority, not significant in respect of numbers and those will be practising 'entry-ism' but can easily be expelled later.

Supporting either the top-down machinations of Leninist control freaks who would only establish a state-capitalist dictatorship over the workers ,or the 'business friendly Labour party, or any parties of the left, right, centre of capitalism, who would govern over the workers, is a deluded choice. Leftist, rightist, centrist, are all manifestations of types of capitalism and that the term 'leftist' is devoid of any particular significance.

Capitalism cannot be reformed despite the well-meaning intentions of decent people in any of those political parties and has to be replaced by a new system of; production for use; democratic delegation, free access; and common ownership of all the means and instruments for creating and distributing wealth run by ourselves. Socialism is a post-capitalist society which will need to be established by the workers of the world, by themselves and for themselves.

Labour's infamous Clause 4 reflected their confused understanding of what socialism is, entails and constitutes. First, it equates common ownership with state ownership. i.e. Nationalisation. State intervention is not socialism. The state exists to help manage the affairs of the ruling class and may indeed intervene in their general interests, nationalising, welfare, to keep the workers fit for future exploitation etc. Secondly it calls for the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. (our emphasis.) But a real commonly owned society would not require a means of rationing access to commonly owned wealth. It is a free access society.

No, the emancipation of the working class is freedom from waged slavery, common ownership of all the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, production for use, utilising technological and informational infrastructure to provide self-regulation stock control systems and free access for all within a delegatory democratic administration over resources and not people by the people themselves and not a government.

We have a world to make and win and the organising societal ethos which will percolate through this, which proceeds from the organising tenet, "From each according to their ability to each according to their needs" will provide the social framework which will shape human behaviour, self-determinedly.

Capitalism cannot be reformed. However, well-intentioned politicians may be it is not in their gift to bestow upon us more “humble mortals”.

"The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois.’ (1879 Marx and Engels)

It is a post-capitalist society and damn all to do with nationalisation or the state-capitalism imposed by the feudal conditions of Russian experience or the state management over people and resources envisaged by the Labour Party.

The whole point of capitalism is to keep a relatively impoverished class of workers toiling away to produce an immense accumulated source of wealth for the parasite capitalist class and banks are just a money changing part of this.

"If money, according to Augier, “comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek,” capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt." (Marx)

Dissolve the governments and politicians, elect yourselves into building a socialist world.

Wee Matt

Digest August 2016

• Why we need a socialist revolution
• To Atheists, Secularists, Rationalists, Humanists ...
• To Atheists, Secularists, Rationalists, Humanists ...
• To Atheists, Secularists, Rationalists, Humanists ...
• To Atheists, Secularists, Rationalists, Humanists ...
• The Socialist Party’s Social Revolution
• Common Ownership and the Commons
• Capitalism's golden rule, those with the gold rule...
• The Govanhill Slums (2)
• The Govanhill slums (1)
• Educate! Agitate! Organise!
• Two anti-war songs (music video)
• Seeking sanity
• Who Owns the North Pole - Part 89
• Getting the sack (1980)
• The Curse of Religion
• Swiss bankroll (1980)
• Tracks That Lead Nowhere
• Crapitalism because capitalism is shit
• A World To Re-Build
• Ideas Transform Movements
• The Cold War Has Begun Again.
• Capitalism - a malignant cancer
• Minorities in Scotland
• Women Soldiers A Reflection!
• The enemy is capitalism.
• Bothies not profits
• Most Single Representative American
• Strategies That Have Failed
• None Of This Affects The Wealthy
• Marxist-Humanism
• Under Constant Attack
• To-day Capitalism, To-morrow Socialism
• Principles First, Methods Afterwards.
• Socialism Now or Apocalypse Now?
• Gun Viiolence And Poverty
• Educate that you may be free
• The Inglorious 12th
• Which Chaotic World Do You Think You Prefer?
• Working-class” is not a dirty word
• Harmony?
• Climate Change Has Claimed Its First Victim!.
• The Times Are Changing
• Brexit - A Socialist Comments.
• 'Green' Capitalism
• Something Fundamentally Should Be Done About It.
• This is Socialism
• Forward to the socialist revolution
• The Calton Weaver (music video)
• Eight years of CND (1966)
• The Socialist Party will not falter
• We follow ideas, not men
• The People’s Platform
• Workers Can Build a Better World
• Break the Chains of Wage Slavery - Fight for Socia...
• Time for revolution

Why we need a socialist revolution

For years the Socialist Party has strived to be the expression of the class-conscious workers. Years of dedicated work has not had the desired result we expected. We took our stand upon the fundamental antagonism of interests between the two classes in society, and we have kept ourselves clear of the crushing influences of both reformism and nationalism. Our vision has always been to fundamentally change the system. We offer a clear class analysis. The world today is a class society, and there is a basic contradiction between the working class and the capitalist class. The social forces which can bring about revolution can be clearly defined. The main social forces capable of creating fundamental social change is the working class. Who are the one class that no society can do without? Those who work. For the working class to assume this crucial role it must be organised, it must have its own political party for the struggle for its empowerment, just as other classes have theirs to enable them to wage political struggle. We must strive to empower the working class because it represents the revolutionary class in society. It is the motor for change in the real world because of its size, its position in society and its relation to the productive process. Today it is those who work who have the responsibility together with the opportunity to reorganise our world. It is going to be difficult, but it is essential. Therefore it must be done. We believe that the clear target of our revolution is the capitalist class.  The Socialist Party states forthrightly that we are fighting for socialism and to fundamentally alter property relations. Revolution means changing property relations. Our socialism will be democratic where the wealth of society will go primarily to those who produce it.

The world is going through some important and momentous changes. The world about us is falling to pieces. Despite the gloating about the failure to bring about socialism, the planet is in deep trouble. All the evils of capitalism have been allowed to flourish openly. The need for some sort of change or in other words, a revolution, is widely realised. The gap between rich and poor is the greatest since the 1930’s. The welfare state and social services created to help the poor are being all but eliminated. Education is failing millions. Racism and hate crime is on the rise. Our environment is being pillaged and plundered for profit. People understand that the world seems to be collapsing, but they do not know what to do about it. We think that we have a clear and more accurate analysis of capitalist society, and an explanation for the tremendous social problems it inflicts upon us. The Socialist Party proposes a clear objective to the people. Being an openly socialist organisation enables us to make more rapid progress in our work. We present a clear view of socialism and advocate a social change which is in the best interest of all people. We explain WHAT we are trying to build, WHERE it is we wish to head and HOW we seek to go. We proudly advocate people not profits. We offer a viable alternative for achieving peace, justice and equality. We advocate peace, justice, equality and socialism.

Socialism is rule by the working people. They will decide how socialism is to work. This was how Marx and Engels defined socialism. They made no attempt to proclaim in advance how a socialist society is to be developed. From the days of the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels proclaimed on the contrary that the makers of a socialist society will be the workers (proletarians) and that it is the task of socialists (or communists) to help the workers to power but not to decide for them or to lead them. To use the word “socialism” for anything but working people’s power is to misuse the term. State ownership of mines, railways, steel, etc. is not socialism, nor does this constitutes “the socialist sector of a mixed economy”. Such nationalisation is simply a degree of state capitalism, with no relation to socialism. The task of the Socialist Party, therefore, is to help and guide the transfer of power from capitalists to working people. Nor is the “Welfare State” socialist. A socialism will certainly give high priority to health, education, art, science, and the social well-being of all its members. That is why it exists, that is the purpose of its economy. But “welfare” in a capitalist state, to improve the efficiency of that state as a profit-maker, is not socialism but another form of state capitalism. It can be an improvement on capitalism with no welfare, just as a 40-hour week is an improvement on a 60-hour week. But it is not socialism. (A “Welfare State” also inevitably turns into the means tested state, as we have seen.)

The organised workers have been for the past century or more, in a position to capture the machinery of the state, on the one condition that they themselves wish to do so, i.e. that they understand that this is both necessary and possible. The political lessons are clear as could be to anyone who understands the threat and consequences of leaving capitalist in the dominant position of the state. Capitalism is maintained by class power and will only be displaced by other class power. We do not think it any longer necessary to attempt proof of the need for revolution if we are to achieve socialism, i.e. to develop an increasingly classless society. If the working people want power they will have to take it. It will not be given to them. The time is ripe for a worldwide liberation movement that defends and promotes the freedoms of all humanity from the ravaging of the 1%.

“In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People.” — Eugene Victor Debs

To Atheists, Secularists, Rationalists, Humanists and Freethinkers (4/4)

The only reasonable position to adopt towards any religion is one of atheism: unbelief. There is a presumption in favour of not believing fantastic claims. It is up to the believer to present proof for the existence of God or life after death. After all, few are agnostic about Father Christmas, fairies or unicorns; we know they don't exist. The same scepticism should also apply to the extraordinary beliefs of religion. With religious believers, however, there is a willingness to believe despite the lack of evidence. And it is this gullibility which socialists find to be dangerous and objectionable. Faith is the last refuge of a believer. Religious faith, however, would only make sense if what was believed in were plausible. Neither the existence of a God nor life after death are plausible, though faith in them undoubtedly offers solace to many. It can make the unbearable seem bearable. But why should an all-loving God allow so much suffering, so much pain in this world – including the so-called "Acts of God" – earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and the rest? If God really did exist, we have no reason for supposing that he cares for us. For some in recent years, religion has combined with New Age beliefs, largely at the expense of the traditional religions whose emphasis on personal guilt, sexual repression and the inferiority of women have become unacceptable. This pick and mix approach can combine elements from the New Testament, Buddhism, psychoanalysis, paganism, astrology and various other bits of the occult. So why, the persistence of religious belief?

The socialist analysis of religion derives from our basic materialism (not in the acquisitive sense, but how we view the production of wealth in society and the sort of ideas it gives rise to). Historical materialism traces how religions have evolved, from their beginnings in ancestor worship and private property in primitive societies, to established social institutions. For the materialist, in other words, society is not really under human control and humans really are at the mercy of blind, impersonal forces – in ancient times the forces of nature, in the modern world the economic forces of capitalism. Under capitalism people feel, rightly, that they are governed by forces they can't control but attribute this, wrongly, to forces operating from outside the world of experience. Churches of all types are then at hand for the sustaining of fear and superstition. For the socialist alternative to our lives being controlled by impersonal forces, we must bring about a society in which humans consciously control the forces of production. It is on this basis that we can say, rather than being abolished, religion can be expected to (as Engels put it in another context) "wither away". And it can be seen that the socialist case against religion differs from the usual humanist position: there are rationalist superstitions as well as religious. For humanists, criticism of religion is a process towards the eventual "triumph of reason". But they ignore the material circumstances which give rise to superstition.

Some folk claim that it cannot be said that it is a scientific fact that “God does not exist”, on the grounds that it cannot be proved that a non-interventionist god does not exist. Maybe but this depends on what is meant by “exist”.  A non-interventionist god, precisely because it did not intervene in the world of observable phenomena, could not be detected and so to all intents and purposes does not exist in any meaningful sense of the word. As to an interventionist god, science does not need that hypothesis to explain the world of phenomena. Socialists try to operate in the same way that scientists do, by looking dispassionately at the evidence without prejudging the conclusions, by testing theories with prediction, and by challenging assumptions, including their own. It’s not always easy to do, but it’s not that hard either. Socialists are not on an anti-religious crusade but campaign to see the world through our eyes rather than someone else's. Religion is a class issue. We must understand our world as it is, make our own generalisations about it, come to our own conclusions. Religions are not deserving of respect just because they are religions; they must be subject to the same scrutiny as any other belief and cannot hide behind the notion that they are personal beliefs.

Atheists see themselves as defenders of the Enlightenment tradition of respect for reason and evidence against its traditional foe, religion. But they see nothing wrong about capitalism. Socialists share in the Enlightenment inheritance but recognise that the main source of irrationality in the modern world is to be found in the capitalist system of society. For socialists, therefore, the struggle against religion cannot be separated from the struggle for socialism. We fight religious superstition wherever it is an obstacle to socialism, but we are opposed to religion only insofar as it is an obstacle to socialism. Capitalism has many opiates to offer the unwary. Reject the pedlars, reject the product, but above all, reject a society which can create such an unhealthy psychological dependency. We need people that realise that the way society is structured is the result of people’s actions as they come together to produce the material things they need to exist, nothing more and nothing less. Belief in some super-natural force that steers it all would be counterproductive, to say the least. We need people who can critically understand the world and not get led along by conmen with their own agendas.

To Atheists, Secularists, Rationalists, Humanists and Freethinkers (3/4)

The Preacher and the Slave

Long-haired preachers come out ev’ry night,

Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right:

But when asked about something to eat,

They will answer with voices so sweet;

You will eat (you will eat) bye and bye (bye and bye)

In that glorious land above the sky (way up high)

Work and pray (work and pray), live on hay (live on hay),

You’ll get pie in the sky when you die (that’s a lie)

Joe Hill

Jared Diamond in his ‘The World Until Yesterday’:

'A set of traits distinguishing a human social group sharing those traits from other groups not sharing those traits in identical form. Included among those shared traits is one or more, often all three, out of three traits: supernatural explanation, defusing anxiety about uncontrollable dangers through ritual, and offering comfort for life's pains and the prospect of death. Religions other than early ones became co-opted to promote standardized organization, political obedience, tolerance of strangers belonging to one's own religion, and justification of wars against groups holding other religions.'

Religion, then, involves belief in supernatural forces (gods, saints, and so on) but also serves functions such as providing consolation against the harshness of class society and justifying particular political views.

A frustration shared by socialists and atheists is the persistence of belief in a god to explain the world. This is partly because ‘god’ is such a quick and easy answer to so many important questions: How did we get here? Why should I behave morally? Why am I here? While science has provided a comprehensive explanation of how and when we got here, and what we are made of, it is less certain when answering the question, why? Human beings seem to have a need for religion, maybe it's a kind of security blanket in a troubled world. Socialists don't seek to ban religion since it would do little good and would probably be counter-productive. Why create martyrs?

There are two ways of opposing religion. One is to refute it as untrue, to show that there are no rational grounds, because there is no convincing evidence, for believing either in “the persistence of life after death” or in “the existence of supernatural beings”. This is the approach of the Secularists and Freethinkers and of course what they say, is true, but this leaves the impression that religion is merely an erroneous belief It leads to concentrating on refuting religious beliefs as such in a purely ideological battle while leaving everything else, including class society and capitalist relations of production, unchanged.

The second way to oppose religion is to explain its origins, development and role in materialist terms as an ideological product of the changing material economic and social conditions under which people have lived. This approach reveals religion to be a reflection of people’s lack of control over the conditions governing the production of their material means of survival and that it survives precisely because people lack this control. On this analysis, opposition to religion cannot be separated from opposition to the economic and social conditions that give rise to it. Religion won’t disappear simply because secularists and freethinkers, or for that matter socialists, refute it as untrue. It will only disappear when people are in a position to control the production of their means of life. This requires the end of the class ownership of the means of production and the end of production for the market with a view to profit and their replacement by common ownership and production directly and exclusively for use. In other words, religion cannot disappear until the conditions of which it is an ideological reflection disappear.

Belief in religion – any religion – warps and hampers the ability to think objectively, particularly about social and political issues such as those now filling the newspapers (Islam, immigration, cultural clashes, etc.). In order to grasp the urgent need for and the possibility of achieving major social change one must first be able to think clearly and to understand just how capitalism works – or, quite often, doesn't. This is something men and women are much less able to do if their heads are full of religious fantasy and their thinking is correspondingly irrational. The disappearance of all religious beliefs, whether “We poor sinners here below” or “Allah's will be done!” should be seen as an essential part of our struggle for socialism and not just as a fringe irrelevance. The first phase in the struggle to end the political and economic exploitation of our class is to learn to question the thoughts we inherit from well-intentioned parents and teachers; to challenge the strictures of the priests, parsons, rabbis and mullahs

Richard Dawkins’ approach to the question of religion is, like religion itself, an idealist one: religion is false, rationally unsustainable; morally enfeebling and a basis for hatred and division. Presumably Dawkins sees the death or meaningful diminution of religion by means of secularist persuasion just as religion hopes to resist secularisation by what it sees as ethical persuasion. Unlike Dawkins, the pioneers of scientific socialism sought to show religion as a reflex of the social organisation of society. It wasn’t simply a question of religion being false, or brutal or divisive; it was a weapon of the ruling class, a bulwark in the way of the emancipation of the working class, a hurdle to be overcome in the progress to socialism nor could it be overcome while the conditions that nourished it continued to exist. Thus, the socialist sees religion as an integral part of the class struggle while the secularist sees it simply as a harmful, false premise on which to base a system of moral rectitude. Dawkins sings the praises of science and in a general sense socialists join in the

chorus. But science, possibly more than most other disciplines, is a prisoner of capitalism. The scientists have to beg at the table of the system for funding to pursue their projects; their sponsors are usually largely mammoth capitalist enterprises bent on discerning means of further enriching their directors and shareholders or capitalist governments dedicated to the overall concerns of national capitalism. Just like the rest of us, the scientist is a prisoner of the crazy logic of the system and just like the rest of us if his or her dedicated function does not hold promise of profit for those who directly or indirectly employ them, irrespective of the potential social benefits of their work, it will be denied funding.